Sports
Basketball

London Lightning forward Tim Ellis gets around Oshawa Power guard Tut Ruach during their NBLC basketball game at the John Labatt Centre in London on Saturday December 10th, 2011. Oshawa won the game 99-93.
CRAIG GLOVER The London Free Press / QMI AGENCY

It wasn't very difficult to figure out what London Lightning coach Micheal Ray Richardson was unhappy about after his team were dumped 99-93 by the Oshawa Power.

All one had to do was stand 10 feet outside the closed door.

We just can't use the words he used to let his players know just how unhappy he was.

Outside the dressing room, Richardson let it be known he didn't like his team's defence or work ethic in front of 2,436 National Basketball League of Canada fans at the John Labatt Centre.

It was the middle game of a three-game blitz against the Power. They play again Sunday in Oshawa.

London blew away the Power 100-76 on Thursday in Oshawa.

Here's the gospel according to Micheal.

"They outworked us," Richardson fumed. "This is minor league basketball. A lot of this game is mental. You can't beat a team by 40 and think that they are going to let you beat them by 40 next time. They have pride too.

"When we went out there and beat them by 40 we thought it would be easy. They outworked us. We're going to play them (Sunday) and we're going to beat them (Sunday.) You got to come to work every night. You can't take nights off. Tonight we took off.

"Defensively we took off. They had too many looks. They are a good shooting team. You can't give them that kind of looks.

"We've been shooting foul shots every day. It was horrendous (Saturday). If we had made out foul shots, we would have won. Just that simple. As bad as we played, if we had made our foul shots we would have won."

The statistics don't lie in this game. The Lightning were 18-of-28 in free throws. That's 64 per cent.

The Power shot 40 per cent from the field but also shot 40 per cent from three-point range going 10-of-25. The Lightning shot 21 per cent from three-point range.

"You've got to make more shots than that," said Lightning forward Rod Buford. "We're professional basketball players.

It was a struggle from the start for the Lightning Saturday.

The Power played much better than their flat performance Thursday and the Lightning didn't the show the same dedication to hard work.

The result were plenty of open jumpers and the Power converted them especially from three-point range

The Power built an 11-point lead late in the third quarter before the Lightning went on one of their patented runs to cut the lead to a manageable size.

But even though they got it back to being two-points back, the Power would hit a key shot and extend the lead.

"We played much better than we did the other night," said Power coach Mark Strickland. "They blew us out in one quarter. We didn't shoot well but we shot well tonight."

The Lightning were without guard DeAnthony Bowden.

There were several players who tried to bring the Lightning back especially Shamari Spears and Gabe Freeman but there weren't enough guns firing.

Akeem Wright led the Power with 25 points while Brandon Robinson hit for 20.